Motivation
What is the Motivation? Where does the inspirations come from?
Well, the story told by Bharat Shahi as published in the popular daily The Kathmandu Post is an inspiration in itself. The impact the Chiva Chaitya organization has on the heritage protection and on communities has been our true motivating factor. Read on...
Three years back, Bharat Shahi remembers every day being a whirlwind of confusion. He was trying to restore a worn out chiva chaitya in front of his house at Dallu Chowk and his days would always be busy. For the restoration process, he had to regularly go back and forth from the Department of Archeology’s office to the ward office and to the community’s people, trying to collect more voices for the restoration.
BharatShahi participating actively(physically and mobilizing the community)
As days went by, he was exhausted and saw almost no hope that the monument he worshipped every day would be put back to its glory. He ultimately gave up entirely. “The stupa was dissipating, chunks of its body were severely cracked, and the layers of asphalt buried its foundation underneath, and for long nobody did anything,” he says.
The shrine, which locals believe dates back centuries, was one of the highlights of the neighbourhood and a major part of the daily rituals of the community. How the monument became forsaken is a long story, he says, one of how time works.
“The family’s elders passed away and their family moved out of the area and they didn’t know the condition of the shrine. While the community people still offer pujas and revere the shrine, nobody had the ownership to repair it and no one really cared enough to initiate its conservation, not even the community's representatives,” he said.
But all that has changed now. The once half-buried and filmed in a layer of dust and grime stupa today stands tall in its renewed grandeur through the initiative of a social organisation Chiva Chaitya. And with the restoration work, footfall has increased multifold. And the milieu of the place has found a facelift, say the locals there. It has become chahakilo, bright in English, says Shahi.
Bharat Shahi (in blue jacket) standing proudly after restoration works
“The people in Chiva Chaitya are doing great work of conserving the uniqueness of the Valley and re-strengthening people’s relationship with the shrines that have surrounded us,” he said. “These shrines are an important part of Kathmandu’s inheritance and culture, one that needs to be preserved,” said Shahi.
Chiva Chaitya’s chiva restoration project started as the country prepared to break from the lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic. Amid the gloom of an economic collapse across the country, where the tourism industry suffered the most, the group found themselves determined to work on the protection of communal heritage to foster the distinct identity of the Valley’s culture and tourism and people’s relationship with tangible inheritance.
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